Old imaginative pattern that appears across cultures and is repeated through the ages.
It can be plots, characters, or images.
Plots - the death of the hero, boy wins girl, the quest, a person who sells his or her soul to the devil for worldly gain, fountain of youth,
Characters - the trickster, the savior, the rescued maiden
Images - a place where people never die, a golden cup, hoarded treasure
Plain style
A way of writing that stresses simplicity and clarity of expression.
Example 1 (involuntarily donated by an anonymous solicitor)
.. PROVIDED ALWAYS AND IT IS HEREBY AGREED AND DECLARED that the Lessor shall be entitled at its absolute discretion to vary the proportion of the Service Costs payable by the Lessee as defined in clause 1(n) in the event of rights being granted pursuant to the terms of paragraph 5 of the Fifth Schedule hereto Provided that such variation shall not result in the said Service Charge proportion being increased Example 2 (from Lord Justice Scarman's judgment in Chase International Corporation v. Oliver (1978))
The plaintiff and the defendants are adjoining landowners. The plaintiff asserts that he has a right of way over the defendants’ land giving access from his land to the public highway. Without this access his land is in fact landlocked, but, for reasons which clearly appear from the narration of the facts already given by my Lords, the plaintiff cannot claim a right of way by necessity. The plaintiff has no grant. He has the benefit of no enforceable contract. He has no prescriptive right. His case has to be that the defendants are estopped by their conduct from denying him a right of access over their land to the public highway. If the plaintiff has any right, it is an equity arising out of the conduct and relationship of the parties. In such a case I think it is now well settled law that the court, having analysed and assessed the conduct and relationship of the parties, has to answer three questions. First, is there an equity established? Secondly, what is the extent of the equity, if one is established? And, thirdly, what is the relief appropriate to satisfy the equity?
from: Wikipedia
Paradox
A statement that appears self contradictory but reveals a kind of truth.
"War is peace."
"Freedom is slavery."
"Ignorance is strength."
(George Orwell, 1984)
"The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot."
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
"If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness."
(Alexander Smith)
A metaphor that is extended or developed over a number of lines or with several examples.
Dikinson's poem "Fame is a bee"
Fame is a bee.
It has a song-
It has a sting-
Ah, too, it has a wing.
from: textbook
“The winds were ocean waves, thrashing against the trees limbs. The gales remained thereafter, only ceasing when the sun went down. Their waves clashed brilliantly with the water beneath, bringing foam and dying leaves to the shore.”
“The teacher descended upon the exams, sank his talons into their pages, ripped the answers to shreds, and then, perching in his chair, began to digest.”
Words or phrases that compare one thing to another, unlike thing
Simile - comparison
Metaphor - comparison
Personification
Irony
a contrast between what is expected and what actually exists or happens. Irony spices up a literary work by adding unexpected twists and allowing the reader to become more involved with the characters and plot.
1. verbal irony: occurs when the speaker means something totally different than what he or she is saying and often times the opposite of what a character is saying is true. 2.dramatic irony: occurs when facts are not known to the characters in a work of literature but are known by the audience. 3.cosmic irony: suggests that some unknown force brings about dire and dreadful events.
4. irony of situation: the difference between what is expected to happen and the way events actually work out.
Motivation
The reason why a character acts, feels or thinks in a certain way.
Dynamic Character
A character who undergoes an important and basic change in personality or outlook.
Comic Relief
A humorous scene, incident, character, or bit of dialogue occurring after some serious or tragic moment. It is deliberately designed to relieve emotional intensity and simultaneously heighten and highlight the seriousness or tragedy of the action.
Symbol
a word or object that stands for another word or object.
Dove stands for Peace
In the story of Adam and Eve when Eve ate the apple, the apple stood for sin. In Cain and Able, the two brothers stood for good and evil, humility and pride.
Inference
a logical guess based on evidence based on evidence in the text.
Advised not to travel alone in temperatures exceeding fifty degrees below zero, the man in Jack London's "To Build a Fire" sets out anyway.
One may infer arrogance from such an action.
In Catch-22 Yossarian inferred that he could get out of the war by declaring himself crazy. Yet if you are sane enough to know you're crazy, then, in reality, you aren't crazy. Yossarian thought he knew all thte details, and inferred a way to escape the war. [Jarrod Armour, '99]
Aphorism
a brief, pithy, usually concise statement or observation of a doctrine, principle, truth, or sentiment. Aphorisms are usually not anonymous.
Benjamin Franklin’s
Early to bed
and early to rise,
makes a man
healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Oscar Wilde's
"one's real life is often the life one does not lead"
Persuasion
persuasive writing is meant to sway readers’ feelings, beliefs, or actions. Persuasion normally appeals to both the mind and the emotions of readers.
Rhetorical Question
one asked solely to produce an effect or to make a statement, but not expected to receive an answer. The purpose to such a question, whose answer is obvious, is usually to make a deeper impression upon the hearer or reader than a direct statement would.
In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Shylock uses rhetorical questions in his famous speech:
Hath not
a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? . . .
If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Act III, scene i : lines 55 – 63
Allusion
a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature. Allusions are often indirect or brief references to well-known characters or events.
Dante’s Inferno
In a passage, Dante alludes to the Greek mythological figures, Phaethon and Icarus, to express his fear as he descends from the air into the eighth circle of hell. He states:
I doubt if Phaethon feared more - that time
he dropped the sun-reins of his father's chariot
and burned the streak of sky we see today - or if poor Icarus did - feeling his sides unfeathering as the wax began to melt,
his father shouting: "Wrong, your course is wrong" (Canto XVII: 106-111).
For example, to communicate the idea of self-sacrifice one may refer to Jesus, as part of Jesus' story portrays him dying on the cross in order to save mankind (Matthew 27:45-56).
Analogy
the relationship of similarity between two or more entities or a partial similarity on which a comparison is based
An example is the classic analogy between the heart and a pump.
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift describes the societies of the Lilliputians and the Brobdingrags in such a way as to make their characteristics and weaknesses analogous to human society.
Anecdote
A short narrative account of an amusing, unusual, revealing, or interesting event.
This is seen in The Canterbury Tales.
It is also seen in the beginning of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five when the author is speasking of how he came to write the succeeding story.
Counterclaim
An opinion that challenges the reasoning behind a position and shows that there are grounds for having an opposite view.
For example, if a landlord sued a tenant or unpaid rent, the tenant might respond with a counterclaim which suggested that the landlord was actually in the legal wrong, thereby hoping to render his or her claim invalid.
For example, a man may sue a woman for money damages because of a minor injury and some property damage after their cars collided. Under the rules governing PLEADING in most courts, the woman would be required to assert a demand for money damages for the same accident in her answer to the man's complaint or she would lose the right to sue on that claim. If the man also happens to be a neighbor who borrowed the woman's chain saw and never returned it, the woman could demand return of the saw as a counterclaim or she could wait and sue the man for that at some other time. She might decide to wait in order to sue in a different court or because she does not want to argue the different circumstances of both claims before the same jury.
Read more: http://law.jrank.org/pages/5798/Counterclaim.html#ixzz0RKu9kbQk
Mood
a mood or atmosphere is the feeling that a literary work conveys to readers. Mood is created through the use of plot, character, the author’s descriptions, etc.
For example, an author may create a mood of mystery around a character or setting but may treat that character or setting in an ironic, serious, or humorous tone
Tone
the writer’s attitude or feeling about his or her subject.
We can, perhaps, appreciate these difficulties if we take the single word 'hello' and consider the variations possible in expressing it to imply an attitude. [This isn't easy to reproduce on screen, but bear with us.]
Allegory
a narrative that serves as an extended metaphor. Allegories are written in the form of fables, parables, poems, stories, and almost any other style or genre. The main purpose of an allegory is to tell a story that has characters, a setting, as well as other types of symbols, that have both literal and figurative meanings
Dante’s The Divine Comedy. In Inferno, Dante is on a pilgrimage to try to understand his own life, but his character also represents every man who is in search of his purpose in the world. Although Virgil literally guides Dante on his journey through the mystical inferno, he can also be seen as the reason and human wisdom that Dante has been looking for in his life.
A famous example is Aesop's fables about the hare and the tortoise (slow and steady wins the race) and the one about the grapevine.
meter
In verse and poetry, meter is a recurring pattern of stressed (accented, or long) and unstressed (unaccented, or short) syllables in lines of a set length.
personification
Giving humanlike qualities or human form to objects and abstractions. Personification is a form of metaphor.
(1) Thou has done a deed whereat valor will weep.–Shakespeare. (Notice that valor, an abstraction, weeps.)
(2) Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered–Shakespeare.
(3) Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me. –Emily Dickinson.
(4) The house pleaded for a new coat of paint.
alliteration
Repetition of consonant sounds.
Examples: (1) But now I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound into saucy doubts and fears.–Shakespeare. (2) Duncan is in his grave; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well–Shakespeare. (3) When I was one-and- twenty–A.E. Housman. (Note that "one" has a "w" sound. (4) I sent thee late a rosy wreath–Ben Jonson. (Note that "wr" has an "r" sound.)
onomatopoeia
Figure of speech in which (1) a word mimics a sound or (2) an arrangement of words in a rhythmic pattern suggests a sound or an image.
Examples of No. 1: burp, varoom, oink, crackle, moo, hiss, gong, thud, splash, zip, creak, boom, slurp, crunch, quack, twitter, honk, hoot, squeak, buzz, and zoom. Example of No. 2, from Sylvia Plath's poem "Daddy," in which the the rhythm of the words in one stanza imitates the chug of a locomotive:An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
"A,B,A,B," indicates a four-line stanza in which the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth. Here is an example of this rhyme scheme from To Anthea, Who May Command Him Any Thing by Robert Herrick:
Bid me to weep, and I will weepWhile I have eyes to see;And having none, and yet I will keepA heart to weep for thee.
imagery
the forming of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things. It is also the use of language to represent actions, persons, objects, and ideas descriptively. This means encompassing the senses also, rather than just forming a mental picture.
T. E. Hulme's "Above the Dock." Here are the opening lines to "Above the Dock":Above the quiet dock in midnight,
Tangled in the tall mast's corded height
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play. the concrete imagery is clear in Sandburg's opening lines to "Fog": "The fog comes / on little cat feet." Whitman's "vapor-pennants" and evocations of "golden brass" and "silvery steel" in "To a Locomotive in Winter";
free verse
verse that lacks regular meter and line length but relies upon natural rhythms. It is free from fixed metrical patterns, but does reveal the cadences that result from alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. The form is thought to add force to thought and expression.
Milton was experimenting with free verse in Samson Agonistes, and Walt Whitman used it in his “After the Sea-ship”:
After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,
After the white-grey sails taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,
Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displace the surface . . .
lines 1 – 8 Song of Myself
by
Walt Whitman I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
I cannot strive to drink
dry the ocean's fill
since you replenish my gulps
with your tears
cadence
The melodic pattern just before the end of a sentence or phrase--for instance an interrogation or an exhortation. More generally, the natural rhythm of language depending on the position of stressed and unstressed syllables.
The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924), by Lord Dunsany (Edward Plunkett), whose writings, according to Neil Gaiman, sound “like those of a poet who got drunk on the prose of the King James Bible.”
The witch approached [the sword] and pared its edges with a sword that she drew from her thigh. Then she sat down beside it on the earth and sang to it while it cooled. Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets.
Another example of cadence: Seamus Heaney’s wonderful translation (2000) of Beowulf. In the following passage, Beowulf and his men have arrived on the Danish shores and walk from the cove to the hall of Hrothgar.
It was a paved track, a path that kept them
in marching order. Their mail-shirts glinted,
hard and hand-linked; the high-gloss iron
of their armour rang. So they duly arrived
in their grim war-graith and gear at the hall,
and, weary from the sea, stacked wide shields
of the toughest hardwood against the wall,
then collapsed on the benches; battle-dress
and weapons clashed. They collected their spears
in a seafarers’ stook, a stand of greyish
tapering ash. And the troops themselves
were as good as their weapons. For example, iambic pentameter is the technical name for rhythm. One sample of predominately iambic pentameter verse could have a gentle, pulsing cadence, whereas another might have a conversational cadence, and still another might have a vigorous, marching cadence.
It can be plots, characters, or images.
Characters - the trickster, the savior, the rescued maiden
Images - a place where people never die, a golden cup, hoarded treasure
.. PROVIDED ALWAYS AND IT IS HEREBY AGREED AND DECLARED that the Lessor shall be entitled at its absolute discretion to vary the proportion of the Service Costs payable by the Lessee as defined in clause 1(n) in the event of rights being granted pursuant to the terms of paragraph 5 of the Fifth Schedule hereto Provided that such variation shall not result in the said Service Charge proportion being increased
Example 2 (from Lord Justice Scarman's judgment in Chase International Corporation v. Oliver (1978))
The plaintiff and the defendants are adjoining landowners. The plaintiff asserts that he has a right of way over the defendants’ land giving access from his land to the public highway. Without this access his land is in fact landlocked, but, for reasons which clearly appear from the narration of the facts already given by my Lords, the plaintiff cannot claim a right of way by necessity. The plaintiff has no grant. He has the benefit of no enforceable contract. He has no prescriptive right. His case has to be that the defendants are estopped by their conduct from denying him a right of access over their land to the public highway. If the plaintiff has any right, it is an equity arising out of the conduct and relationship of the parties. In such a case I think it is now well settled law that the court, having analysed and assessed the conduct and relationship of the parties, has to answer three questions. First, is there an equity established? Secondly, what is the extent of the equity, if one is established? And, thirdly, what is the relief appropriate to satisfy the equity?
from: Wikipedia
"Freedom is slavery."
"Ignorance is strength."
(George Orwell, 1984)
"The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot."
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
"If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness."
(Alexander Smith)
from: http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/paradoxterm.htm
Fame is a bee.
It has a song-
It has a sting-
Ah, too, it has a wing.
from: textbook
“The winds were ocean waves, thrashing against the trees limbs. The gales remained thereafter, only ceasing when the sun went down. Their waves clashed brilliantly with the water beneath, bringing foam and dying leaves to the shore.”
“The teacher descended upon the exams, sank his talons into their pages, ripped the answers to shreds, and then, perching in his chair, began to digest.”
from: http://www.writesville.com/writesville/2006/01/examples_of_met.html
Metaphor - comparison
Personification
1. verbal irony: occurs when the speaker means something totally different than what he or she is saying and often times the opposite of what a character is saying is true.
2. dramatic irony: occurs when facts are not known to the characters in a work of literature but are known by the audience.
3. cosmic irony: suggests that some unknown force brings about dire and dreadful events.
4. irony of situation: the difference between what is expected to happen and the way events actually work out.
In the story of Adam and Eve when Eve ate the apple, the apple stood for sin.
In Cain and Able, the two brothers stood for good and evil, humility and pride.
One may infer arrogance from such an action.
In Catch-22 Yossarian inferred that he could get out of the war by declaring himself crazy. Yet if you are sane enough to know you're crazy, then, in reality, you aren't crazy. Yossarian thought he knew all thte details, and inferred a way to escape the war. [Jarrod Armour, '99]
Early to bed
and early to rise,
makes a man
healthy, wealthy, and wise.
Oscar Wilde's
"one's real life is often the life one does not lead"
Hath not
a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? . . .
If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Act III, scene i : lines 55 – 63
- Dante’s Inferno
In a passage, Dante alludes to the Greek mythological figures, Phaethon and Icarus, to express his fear as he descends from the air into the eighth circle of hell. He states:I doubt if Phaethon feared more - that time
he dropped the sun-reins of his father's chariot
and burned the streak of sky we see today -
or if poor Icarus did - feeling his sides
unfeathering as the wax began to melt,
his father shouting: "Wrong, your course is wrong" (Canto XVII: 106-111).
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift describes the societies of the Lilliputians and the Brobdingrags in such a way as to make their characteristics and weaknesses analogous to human society.
It is also seen in the beginning of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five when the author is speasking of how he came to write the succeeding story.
For example, a man may sue a woman for money damages because of a minor injury and some property damage after their cars collided. Under the rules governing PLEADING in most courts, the woman would be required to assert a demand for money damages for the same accident in her answer to the man's complaint or she would lose the right to sue on that claim. If the man also happens to be a neighbor who borrowed the woman's chain saw and never returned it, the woman could demand return of the saw as a counterclaim or she could wait and sue the man for that at some other time. She might decide to wait in order to sue in a different court or because she does not want to argue the different circumstances of both claims before the same jury.
Read more: http://law.jrank.org/pages/5798/Counterclaim.html#ixzz0RKu9kbQk
A famous example is Aesop's fables about the hare and the tortoise (slow and steady wins the race) and the one about the grapevine.
(2) Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered–Shakespeare.
(3) Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me. –Emily Dickinson.
(4) The house pleaded for a new coat of paint.
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
Bid me to weep, and I will weepWhile I have eyes to see;And having none, and yet I will keepA heart to weep for thee.
Tangled in the tall mast's corded height
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play.
the concrete imagery is clear in Sandburg's opening lines to "Fog": "The fog comes / on little cat feet."
Whitman's "vapor-pennants" and evocations of "golden brass" and "silvery steel" in "To a Locomotive in Winter";
After the sea-ship, after the whistling winds,
After the white-grey sails taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad myriad waves hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship,
Waves of the ocean bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,
Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,
Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves,
Where the great vessel sailing and tacking displace the surface . . .
lines 1 – 8
Song of Myself
by
Walt Whitman
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
I cannot strive to drink
dry the ocean's fill
since you replenish my gulps
with your tears
The witch approached [the sword] and pared its edges with a sword that she drew from her thigh. Then she sat down beside it on the earth and sang to it while it cooled. Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets.
Another example of cadence: Seamus Heaney’s wonderful translation (2000) of Beowulf. In the following passage, Beowulf and his men have arrived on the Danish shores and walk from the cove to the hall of Hrothgar.
It was a paved track, a path that kept them
in marching order. Their mail-shirts glinted,
hard and hand-linked; the high-gloss iron
of their armour rang. So they duly arrived
in their grim war-graith and gear at the hall,
and, weary from the sea, stacked wide shields
of the toughest hardwood against the wall,
then collapsed on the benches; battle-dress
and weapons clashed. They collected their spears
in a seafarers’ stook, a stand of greyish
tapering ash. And the troops themselves
were as good as their weapons.
For example, iambic pentameter is the technical name for rhythm. One sample of predominately iambic pentameter verse could have a gentle, pulsing cadence, whereas another might have a conversational cadence, and still another might have a vigorous, marching cadence.